Airdrie1

Livingston2

YOU could never accuse Steve Archibald of lacking self-confidence. However, there was something audacious about the way the Airdrie manager, emerging after his side's seventh game without a win on Saturday, sounded so positively bullish about his side's situation

''Worried, Steve?'' the attendant hacks asked in the wake of Livingston's 2-1 win, Airdrie's fourth defeat of the season. As if. ''No, we played them off the park today,'' said Archibald. ''Our keeper's not had a save to make. If we use that as a yardstick, what's the difference between them and us?''

It would have been tempting to say 13 points, but from Saturday's performance you could see what he meant. Archibald's Airdrie play attractive, intelligent, busy football, albeit lacking in punch, and for much of Saturday's meeting of the top of the table and bottom there was no evident gulf between the two.

Yet come Saturday night there was still a whole division separating the teams. For Archibald, the reason is simple - lapses in concentration in the centre of his defence - and, by the sound of it, simply remedied. ''We've talked about correcting the defensive errors that we are making and that's obviously down to me, because we don't seem able to do it on the park.'' Expect a new face at Shyberry in the near future.

Archibald's opposite number, Jim Leishman, played the polite guest after the match, arguing that his hosts' anchor role in the table was a ''false'' position. No-one was brave enough to suggest the same could be said of Livvy, but Saturday's victory, following on from that emphatic 4-0 home defeat to Raith, was far from convincing. Certainly for the first 45 minutes they looked as sluggish and unimaginative as they had against Peter Hetherston's side seven days before.

Throughout the first half Airdrie played around their visitors, for all that they didn't create much of note. That changed immediately after the break when Paul Armstrong and Darren Brady linked up across Livvy's 18-yard line, before the latter fed Martin Prest, who spun round his marker and fired past Neil Alexander.

It showed an incisiveness that Airdrie otherwise lacked in the match. The front line of Prest and David Fernandez is undoubtedly mobile and links fluently with the midfield, but it did seem a bit lightweight. ''We create a lot of chances and we've got to take maybe one or two more chances and finish teams off,'' suggested Archibald.

That never looked likely on Saturday. Livvy nerves might have been a little stretched if Airdrie had managed to hold on to their lead for any appreciable time, but a minute after Prest's goal came the first of those lapses of concentration when John Anderson rose unchallenged to head home Derek Fleming's cross from the right.

Before the hour mark Livvy were ahead. A rather aimless high ball into the Airdrie box was chased, more in hope than expectation, by Scott Crabbe only for the Livvy striker's arm to be tugged back by Miguel Alfonso. Derek Bingham converted the spot kick.

However, it was then all Airdrie and Neil Alexander was forced to show his class with a couple of cracking saves from Airdrie substitute Stephen McKeown towards the end of the game.

It was also at the tail-end of the match that tempers began to fray. Graham Coughlan was red-carded for taking a swing at McKeown when the youngster had tried to play on rather than return the ball to the visitors after Livvy had put it out of play to attention for Bingham.

After the game, Leishman was emollient about the actions of his defender. ''Football's a contact sport. These things happen. It was passionate today.''

One wonders if passion's a word that features in Archibald's vocabulary.